Down in the engine-room, where there was no air stirring, and the
vapor of steam hung heavily in the atmosphere, the heat was almost
insupportable.
The engineer, clothed lightly as he was, fairly dripped with
perspiration. The fireman, with face and neck like a lobster, went
out, at intervals, and plunged his hands and his head too into the
stream of cool water sent out from the mine by the laboring pumps.
Up in the screen-room, the boys were sweltering above their chutes,
choking with the thick dust, wondering if the afternoon would never be
at an end.
Bachelor Billy, pushing the cars out from the head, said to himself
that he was glad Ralph was no longer picking slate. It was better that
he should work in the mines. It was cool there in summer and warm in
winter, and it was altogether more comfortable for the boy than it
could be in the breaker; neither was it any more dangerous, in his
opinion, than it was among the wheels and rollers of the screen-room.
He had labored in the mines himself, until the rheumatism came and put
a stop to his under-ground toil. He mourned greatly the necessity that
compelled him to give up this kind of work. It is hard for a miner to
leave his pillars and his chambers, his drill and powder-can and fuse,
and to seek other occupation on the surface of the earth. The very
darkness and danger that surround him at his task hold him to it with
an unaccountable fascination.
But Bachelor Billy had a good place here at the breaker.
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